Glossary Term – Event

John Brown, with allies including five black men, led an armed abolitionist raid on the Harpers Ferry arsenal in Virginia. Two days later the US Army, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee, stormed Harpers Ferry and captured Brown.

Glossary Term – Event

Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which overturned the Missouri Compromise. This opened Kansas and Nebraska to white settlement and allowed popular sovereignty to determine slave- or free-state status in territories seeking statehood. The act destroyed the Whig Party, divided the Democratic Party, and prompted the creation the Republican Party. The author of this legislation was Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had pushed the Compromise of 1850 through Congress. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, Douglas had proposed...

Glossary Term – Event

In a speech at Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln denounced the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford, declaring it “erroneous” and vowing that “we shall do what we can to have [the Supreme Court] over-rule this.”